easter egg birds nest cupcakes

Easter is coming up soon, so I thought I'd share these easter egg cupcakes that I made last year! I've always loved those Cadbury chocolate mini eggs, so I knew I wanted to use them to decorate the cupcakes, and I decided to make them extra chocolatey desserts by making them chocolate cupcakes with chocolate cream cheese frosting!

For the cupcake batter, I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe (you can find it in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), except I used coconut milk instead of regular milk. This is a great way to make this cupcake recipe dairy free, since the recipe also uses vegetable oil instead of butter. I often do this when I'm making cupcakes for my friend Reggie, who's daughter Rachel is allergic to dairy. 

Of course this specific cupcake was not going to be dairy free, because of the chocolate cream cheese frosting and Cadbury mini eggs, but if you still wanted to make these cupcakes you could always use a whipped dark chocolate ganache (and use coconut milk again instead of milk) and jelly beans for the easter eggs!

After the cupcakes were baked and cooled, I started on the chocolate cream cheese frosting (the recipe for cream cheese frosting is also in my book, you'll just need to add melted chocolate to taste!) Then to form my frosting "nests", I used a disposable pastry bag fitted with a small round tip, and piped circular rings of frosting all over the top of the cupcake.

Be sure to pipe more frosting around the perimeter of the nest, so that you can nestle your chocolate eggs in the middle of the nest!

Done! Super simple, and super tasty!

When I served these at my mom's house, my daughter actually went around to everyone asking for their chocolate eggs! So you may want to bring extra chocolate eggs for the little ones!

Happy Easter!

deviled eggs

I normally don't write about savory items on my blog (there are so few that you can see them all here), but since it's Easter I thought it would be the perfect time to share my favorite recipe for deviled eggs! They are the perfect easy snack or appetizer to make for any gathering, including Easter!

For the eggs, you can boil them or steam them like I like to do (in a rice cooker for 12 minutes, with the eggs propped up on a metal trivet!), but be sure to submerge them in an ice bath afterwards for easy peeling. Once all of the eggs are peeled, cut them in half and carefully pull out all of the yolks, and add them to a bowl with the rest of the filling ingredients. Then you can use a fork to smash the yolks with the rest of the ingredients. (I've also seen shows where they whisk the filling in a standing mixer for a smoother consistency!)

Once the filling is well mixed, I like to use a disposable pastry bag and a large star tip to pipe the filling into each egg white cavity, bur you could also just use a small spoon to drop the filling in.



Then top each egg with sliced gherkins (I also added homegrown cilantro instead of pimentos, but you could also do green onions or other herbs), and then sprinkle a bit of paprika over each one, and you're done! Super fast and easy, and the kids even helped me decorate them!

Happy Easter!

decorated egg cookies for a red egg party

Remember these baby face cookies that I made for a baby shower several months ago for my friend Stephanie, who was hosting a baby shower for her twin sister Selena? Well Selena's adorable baby boy was welcomed into the world last April, and when he turned 1 month she asked me to make decorated egg cookies for his Red Egg and Ginger Party!

In case you're not familiar with it, here is a description that Selena had sent me: "A Red Egg and Ginger Party is a Chinese tradition that celebrates a newborn's 30th day (1 month of life).  Eggs were considered a delicacy in China and were usually the present brought by the maternal grandmother.  The egg symbolizes fertility and renewal of life, and when it is dyed red it is believed to bring good luck to the child."

For the design of the cookie, I referenced a picture that Selena had sent me of a decorated egg cookie, which I later found on the blog Lizy B Bakes (love her work!). For the cookie cutter, I used a custom copper cutter that my husband had made me a few years ago. It was meant for these Spiderman cookies, but worked just as well for egg cookies! And for the cookie dough, I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe which can be found in my book The Hello Kitty Baking Book (and I also used the royal icing recipe in the book as well!)

Once the cookies were baked and cooled, I piped an outline around the egg with stiff white icing, and then filled it in with runny white icing. Once that had hardened after several hours, I again outlined it with stiff red icing.

Next I used stiff yellow icing to pipe the baby's name at the bottom of the egg.

Then I used stiff brown icing to pipe branches and a tiny bird nest in the middle of the cookie.

After that I added a red egg and two little blue birds.

Next came more branches with red blossoms, along with little green leaves on the bottom branches. And the final touch was the eyes and beaks for the little blue birds.

Although they weren't as perfect as the ones by Lizy B Bakes, I thought they came out pretty cute!

To go along with these decorated egg cookies, I also made goat/ram cookies, as this is the Year of the Goat/Ram (details in my next post)!

Happy one month, little Dominic! Hope you had a wonderful Red Egg and Ginger Party!